Implications for practice and research

▪ With appropriate training and safeguards, nurse-initiated analgesia should be more broadly adopted for treatment of emergency
department (ED) patients with abdominal pain. Further research is warranted investigating barriers to early analgesia administration
in ED.

▪ Research is warranted comparing different analgesia protocols for safety and effectiveness.

▪ Research should investigate the safety and effectiveness of analgesia initiated at triage.

Context

Pain is a very common problem in EDs. There is convincing evidence that treatment of pain in the ED is suboptimal, in timeliness
and adequacy of pain control.1 Contributors to this failure include myths regarding masking of symptoms, historical models of care where …